I stood outside for several minutes, holding my suitcase and wondering whether I was making a terrible mistake.
Then I knocked.
No one answered.
I knocked again.
Still nothing.
The door, however, wasn’t completely closed.
I pushed it gently.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
I stepped inside.
The house was warm and beautifully decorated for Christmas.
There was a tree in the living room.
There were presents underneath it.
Everything looked normal.
Almost too normal.
Then I heard something upstairs.
A faint sound.
I froze.
“Hello?”
Again, silence.
I slowly walked toward the staircase.
And that’s when I noticed something that made my heart begin to race.
There were family photographs covering the wall.
Photographs of my daughter.
Photographs I had never seen.
There were pictures of her with her husband.
But there were also photographs of someone else.
A little boy.
A little girl.
And then—
I saw a photograph that made me stop breathing.
The Photograph
